


must be soon, now

by hobijam



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Gen, HIV/AIDS, I don't know how to describe it, Minor Character Death, Suicidal Thoughts, he's come to terms with dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 21:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12262014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobijam/pseuds/hobijam
Summary: Guilt's beaded eyes stare at him while he sleeps. Vultures circle overhead. The ocean below is waiting, begging him to join it.





	must be soon, now

**Author's Note:**

> this is heavily inspired by a short story i wrote for my creative writing class :)

Joonmyeon likes the feeling of sand between his toes. It’s not the summer beach kind of sand. It’s cool, silver sand, almost iced over and just out of reach of the frigid ocean waves. No one, no thing, has been here for a long time. His footprints are the only on the landscape. Gulls circle above him, shrieking, like vultures circle a dying animal. Joonmyeon wonders how accurate they might be. He doesn’t really know. He doesn’t really think he cares much, either. All he cares about right now is the turbulent waves to his left and the tall cliffs, pine forests, to his right. 

That ocean catches him unaware sometimes. Surging up, soaking the ankles of his rolled blue jeans. Joonmyeon’s feet are already numb, but the cold does bring him back to himself, away from his spiraling thoughts. Maybe it’s as good thing. He has too much to think about, and too much longing to be completely thoughtless. He finds himself… not happiest, but maybe least melancholy- when he is in a state of mindlessness, entirely enraptured by the pockmarks his feet make in the sand. 

Where he is, this tiny dot of an island in the winter sea, is technically a rainforest. Not all of them are tropical, apparently. This rainforest is cold enough to often leave ice on the ground, and the heavy mist sucks the heat out of Joonmyeon like an ice bath. It’s beautiful though. Beautiful to him. Everything is soaked in water, whether it be from the marine fog or the overhead rain. The moss on the trees drips in little rivulets, the ground crunches or squishes under his feet, depending on the temperature. Joonmyeon must be soaked in water too. His skin is loose and pale, clothes getting larger and larger on his rapidly deteriorating skeleton. Here, the water in him is surrounded by green and gray and brown, not a single thing manmade but the shack he’s living out of. 

He’s probably a squatter at this point. The bank account connected to the renter was near empty when he left; medications are expensive. Joonmyeon is the closest thing to elated a dying man can be now that he’s free of all the treatment, thethousands of pills that scratched his throat when they went down. They weren’t working anyways, not by the end. 

On the beach, he stops in the center. Three hundred feet of empty sand are on each side of him, a foreboding cliff face behind him. Shoving his icy hands in his pockets, he watches the waves come in. They rise and fall with bestial roars, pounding on the sand like a drummer’s hand. He wonders if the ocean notices him. If it cares. His life is nothing to the unfathomably long years of the ocean’s stained-glass memories. Does it realize that the feet its tender fingers pull on are a human’s? Probably not, but then again, Joonmyeon hasn’t been noticing himself much either. He doesn’t think he’s taken a single shower since he’s arrived here, and doesn’t remember if there even is a shower. His hair is a tangled mess on his head and his face probably shines with oil. 

It won’t matter soon enough. 

The climb up the cliffs is dangerous. Joonmyeon can’t count the number of times the grass or stone he uses as handholds have given out on him, the close-calls he’s had, wavering on the edge of freefall off those narrow footpaths. There’s a wider, sandy path at the top of the cliffs, somehow beaten in despite the fact that no animals larger than the squirrels live here, and no humans have walked its shores for decades. 

Sometimes, his brain just shuts off, and he comes back to himself on the other side of the island. It’s always the same place- the packed-earth top of the highest cliff there is, surrounded on all sides but one by pines thick enough to obscure the sun. The wind is strong there, and it seems to whisper in his ears when he’s not trying to hear it. There’s something about this one cliff. It vibrates with a foreign energy, something that breaks into his chest and hums through his nerves to his fingertips, sparking out like lightning. It’s something almost glorious. This cliff wants him. It’s waiting. 

It might be the one. 

The world of green, brown, and gray surrounds him on this island. It’s what makes it so appealing. Nothing unnatural is here but for the small shack Joonmyeon stays in, but even that is made from the rocks, sand, and wood around him. Despite being mostly constructed of rock and sea logs, the cabin is surprisingly sturdy. The inside is much like the outside. Just two rooms of dark stone and sea-bleached wood. The stove still burns and the toilet still flushes, and that’s fine enough for him. 

It happens on a night indistinguishable from the monotony of the others he’s spent on the island. It’s more sleepless than most, and Joonmyeon’s demons have almost taken physical form, for all they torment him. When he closes his eyes, yellow, beaded ones stare back at him. They judge him. 

This is his fault. He’d loved someone with the disease and was so caught up in his lies that Joonmyeon caught it himself. That relationship had ended, but when a new one began… He found himself doing the same thing. He was afraid. How could they love someone with an expiration date. So he lied. He likes to tell himself that it wasn’t lying. It was just not telling the truth. But the demons that stare at him know. It was a lie. A lie that led to the spread of poison from Joonmyeon to his lover. A lie that led to Joonmyeon feeling their hand go slack, and holding it as it grew cold in death. 

He can almost feel the Devil’s hot breath on his neck. His sheets are sweaty and tangle around him like a net. A noose. So he climbs out of them. Pulls on his coat and hat, rubs his hands. He steps outside into the night. It’s cold. Colder than day, and colder than most of the nights before, as well. Maybe it’s because the marine layer is gone; it’s only endless sky above Joonmyeon’s head, the moon shining dully on the ground, casting silvery light on the glistening needles of the pine trees. The stars above taunt him with their escape from this planet. 

Something is pulling Joonmyeon. A warm, coaxing hand, clasped firmly around his heart. It tugs him down the path, tripping mindlessly over the branches and rocks that have been thrown into the small walkway. He trips several times, but one is worse than the others. Something burns in his hand, and when he looks at it, it’s saturated with blood, thick, hot, and almost black in the low light. It dampens the sleeve of his shirt and coat with its wetness. Joonmyeon can only stare, transfixed, at the inky blots that splatter on the sand-silt soil of the trail. 

The pain is nothing compared to what he’s done to himself, made himself feel. His fingers tingle, and his head is dizzy- blood loss- but it’s not important. Right now, he’s commanded to watch. There are no positive emotions connected to this spilling of blood, no relief, no giddy, adrenaline-filled shivers. But neither is there anything negative. No fear, pain, worry. The cut just is. It exists, and Joonmyeon is observing it. 

The ache in his chest pulls him further along the path. Dark drops follow him, a macabre trail of breadcrumbs. He’s led to the cliffside, the one in the clearing above the sea, the sharp rocks. The pines around it hide even the moon and stars from view, creating an almost alien world of shadow beneath them. They obscure the horizon, the sea, from view, and the only indication that he’s moving towards it is the steady increase in the crash of the waves, the slow creep of mist into the air. 

He steps out into the moonlight. The cliff is bare before him, a silver plate held on top of a spire of jagged slate.Waves that throw themselves against the rocks send cascades of their breath into the air, nearly choking Joonmyeon and thoroughly saturating his clothes in a frigid dampness. 

A storm crouches on the horizon, dark, tumbling clouds blowing towards the island. They steal the moonlight out of the ocean below them and whip up its waters into the giant swells that crash against Joonmyeon’s cliff. Brewing inside him, too, is another storm. The guilt that crawls and tears inside his lungs threatens to claw its way out, scratching with its long fingers up Joonmyeon’s throat and dropping bitter smoke onto the back of his tongue. The scrabbling long fingers reach for the corners of his lips, trying to pull his mouth open and free itself. They want to taste his blood, his life, that spills on the ground; they tire of the weak, diseased blood that flows where his heart should lie between his ribs. 

Joonmyeon doesn’t want the guilt to rip its way out of his body. He can’t. He raises his bleeding hand, stepping closer and closer to the cliff’s edge until he can hold it out, let his blood drip into the black water below him. Something creates a bond. A connection. Sudden and unbreakable. Joonmyeon is part of the sea, he is an extension of the tumultuous waves below him, and as such, the waves are a part of him. Icy salt water pours into his veins through the opening in his palm, freezing the guilt in his chest and breaking it into shards that still hurt, but aren’t as heavy. He is the sea. The sea is him. It’s addictive. In this moment, he has power- he _is_ power. 

The connection pulls him, dragging him closer and closer to the edge. The depths of the sea whisper in his ears, the wind blows promises through his tangled hair, singing sweet love songs. The grip is too strong. It takes the place of the guilt in his lungs, squeezing down on his heart and pulling him closer, and closer. It wants him. It wants him to join it, sacrifice what’s left of his wrecked body and give himself to the waters. He will be home. He will be at rest. Nothing that torments him will follow. Everything will go. 

Is this what he wants? Not the ocean, him? Does he truly crave death? 

Yes, the pain will stop. Guilt won’t hunch and growl in his chest. He won’t be a dying man. He will be part of the sea, bleached bones at the bottom of the cliffs. It’s what he’s wanted for so long, yet never found the courage to throw himself from the safety of land into the depths of the water below. 

And here the ocean is. Not just welcoming him, begging him. 

His head hurts. The gap in his chest is sore. It wants. 

What does he want? Joonmyeon doesn’t know. 

The pull on him recedes, sensing his indecision. It will not pull him if he isn’t ready. 

He stares into the thick ocean mist again. At the cut on his hand. It’s begun to clot and scab over, severing the bond. The war inside him is not over, but it pauses. His head is as clear as the night sky above him. The storm is on the horizon, but only that. It won’t come tonight, or tomorrow. Tomorrow, there will be sun. 

Suddenly tired, he feels a deep kind of exhaustion that penetrates him down to the bones. His body sags in on itself as he turns away from the cliff, the waiting night. Walking home, Joonmyeon stares at the specks of dry blood in the dirt. 

**Author's Note:**

> hope i didn't bum you out too much  
> talk to me anytime at dadhakyeon or btsdadd on tumblr :)


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